Aircraft comprise a great deal of electrical, mechanical and computerized onboard equipment. The functioning of this onboard equipment, the processings of which are necessary for proper flight progress, is monitored notably by the crew of the aircraft during the flight. Any failure of one of the items of equipment can be reported either by the crew of the aircraft, or by the item of equipment itself, or by an onboard maintenance system to which the item of equipment can be linked. On returning to the ground, all the data relating to failures, if any, are collected and then analysed by a ground maintenance team.
One of the issues in aircraft maintenance is that of being able to identify as rapidly as possible critical faults of the onboard equipment, as well as their origin so as to afford fast correction, in order to avoid to the utmost the grounding of an aircraft, something that is very expensive for airlines.
In an aeroplane, faults and malfunctions are closely monitored and processed in a specific manner. Several functions are concerned. The fault and maintenance messages form the subject of reports. The flight register or “Logbook” allows the pilot to inform the maintenance personnel of the various malfunctions of the aeroplane. In response to this information provided by the pilot, the maintenance teams consult the paper or electronic documentation in relation to these malfunctions.
In existing systems, as a function of the context specific to an aeroplane or in response to the noting of one or more alarms displayed in the cockpit, the pilot must manually fill in the paper or electronic logbook. Subsequently, the maintenance personnel conduct various investigations so as to make the link between the information provided by the pilot and the reports or information available within the centralized maintenance system.
In existing systems, the maintenance operations are generally guided and conducted by entirely manual actions on the part of the pilot and the maintenance personnel.
These existing solutions are not optimized, may be slow and cause risks of errors.
There exists a need for schemes and systems for managing faults, alerts and alarms in an optimal manner with a view to the ground maintenance operations.